Baker Finds Big Changes In Europe

ANALYSIS

Allies Waiting To Learn How U.s. Plans To Move Into New Era

February 21, 1989|By Don Oberdorfer, Washington Post

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration's first foray into international diplomacy, Secretary of State James Baker's trip to NATO nations, found a Western alliance in full-scale transition in the security and economic fields and waiting impatiently to learn how Washington will deal with a new era.

Baker had more questions than answers for the Europeans on a whirlwind journey he described as an ''agenda-setting trip.'' But he appears to have returned with a vivid realization that new maneuvers, if not large-scale shifts in strategy, will be required from the United States in the months ahead.

Speaking to reporters on his Air Force plane on the way home Friday, Baker identified two aspects of the transition he found in his talks in Europe.

One, he said, is in ''threat perception'' - a sharp reduction in the sense of danger from across the Iron Curtain that has been a fact of life throughout the post-World War II era and that undergirded the creation and continuing support of the powerful military apparatus of the Atlantic alliance.

The other, Baker noted, is the momentum toward European economic integration - the surprising, and now probably irreversible, drive to create by 1992 a single Western European market that will be as big or bigger than the U.S. market and several times bigger than that of Japan.

Together the two transitions could bring vast changes in the military, economic and political makeup of Europe and in European relations with the United States.

On two days in Brussels last week, Baker visited the headquarters of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the key military institution of the U.S.-European alliance, and the headquarters of the European Economic Community, the key economic institution of an increasingly unified Western Europe. As the European emphasis shifts from concentration on security to concentration on economics - a shift also taking place in the Soviet Union, China and even the United States - the future importance of NATO seems less certain that that of the EC.

Baker, as a former Treasury secretary, is aware of and comfortable with the economic questions. He noted that seven of the 13 foreign ministers and 11 prime ministers he met were former finance ministers. With economics increasingly in the saddle, however, the issues between the United States and Europe are likely to become more contentious and recognition of U.S. leadership less automatic.

As for security, Baker last week had the difficult job of persuading Western European leaders, especially the West Germans, to approve the development and eventual use of more powerful short-range nuclear missiles in Europe while Soviet forces and, even more, the perception of a tangible Soviet threat, appear to be diminishing.

Interviewed on NBC's Meet the Press Sunday, Baker expressed confidence that ''we'll be able to work this out satisfactorily between now and the end of May'' when President Bush and the other top political leaders of NATO are expected to gather for a summit meeting in Brussels on the 40th anniversary of the formal founding of the alliance.